Russia bears down on Mariupol as defenders shelter in Ukrainian steel plant
Russia claims 400 foreign mercenaries among Ukrainian troops surrounded in Azovstal complex
The Associated Press · Posted: Apr 17, 2022
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-uk ... -1.6422036
The battered port city of Mariupol appeared on the brink of falling to Russian forces Sunday after seven weeks under siege, a development that what would give Moscow a crucial success in Ukraine following a botched attempt to storm the capital and the loss of the Russian navy's Black Sea flagship.
The Russian military estimated that about 2,500 Ukrainian fighters holding out at a hulking steel plant with a warren of underground passageways provided the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol. Russia gave another deadline for their surrender, saying those who put down their weapons were "guaranteed to keep their lives," but Ukraine remained defiant.
"All those who will continue resistance will be destroyed," said Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defence Ministry's spokesperson. He said intercepted communications indicated there were about 400 foreign mercenaries — most of them from European countries and Canada — along with the Ukrainian troops at the Azovstal steel mill, a claim that couldn't be independently verified.
Seizing Mariupol would free up Russian forces to weaken and encircle Ukrainian soldiers forces in Eastern Ukraine, where Russia has focused its war aims for now and is deploying personnel and equipment withdrawn from the north after the failure to take Kyiv.
Mariupol a 'shield defending Ukraine'
Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar described Mariupol as a "shield defending Ukraine" as Russian troops prepare for a full-scale offensive in Donbas, the country's eastern industrial heartland where Moscow-backed separatists already control some territory.
Malyar said that the Russians have continued to hit Mariupol with airstrikes and appeared to be preparing an amphibious landing to beef up their forces in the city.
A Russian Defence Ministry spokesperson said Saturday that Ukrainian forces had been driven out of most of the city and remained only in the Azovstal steel mill, where tunnels allow the defenders to hide and resist until they run out of ammunition.
Zelenksy says siege could scuttle any talks
With the last Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol refusing to surrender, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address to the nation that Russia is "deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there." He said Ukraine needs more heavy weapons from the West immediately to have any chance of saving the port city on the Sea of Azov.
"Either our partners give Ukraine all of the necessary heavy weapons, the planes, and without exaggeration immediately, so we can reduce the pressure of the occupiers on Mariupol and break the blockade," he said, "or we do so through negotiations, in which the role of our partners should be decisive."
Earlier, Zelensky had told Ukrainian journalists the siege of Mariupol, which has lasted more than six weeks and has come at a horrific cost to trapped and starving civilians, could "put an end to any format of negotiations" to end the war.
Invasion in its 8th week
The Russians already control what is left of the city after weeks of bombardment. Striking the steel plant to take the rest is part of Russia's preparations for the anticipated assault in Eastern Ukraine.
The ongoing siege of Mariupol has come at a high cost, with officials estimating Russian forces have killed at least 21,000 people. Just 120,000 people remain in the city, out of a pre-war population of 450,000.
Capturing Mariupol would allow Russian forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland and the focus of the anticipated offensive.
Russia strikes Kyiv and eastern cities
In a reminder that no part of Ukraine was immune until the war ends, Russian forces carried out new missile strikes Sunday near Kyiv and elsewhere in an apparent effort to weaken Ukraine's military capacity before the anticipated assault in the east, as part of an invasion now in its eighth week.
After failing to capture Ukraine's capital and the humiliating loss of the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, and Russia's military command vowed to step up missile strikes on the capital, Kyiv. The Russians said they hit an armoured vehicle plant on Saturday, a day after targeting a missile plant.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Saturday's strike killed one person and wounded several. He advised residents who fled the city earlier in the war not to return.
The Russian military claimed on Sunday to have destroyed Ukrainian air defence radars in the east, near Sievierodonetsk, as well as several ammunition depots elsewhere. Explosions were reported overnight in Kramatorsk, an eastern city where rockets killed at least 57 people at a train station crowded with civilians trying to evacuate before the expected Russian offensive.
Attacks in 8 regions
The Ukrainian president's office reported missile strikes and shelling in eight regions across the country between Friday and Saturday.
The governor of the Lviv region in western Ukraine, which has been only sporadically touched by the war's violence, reported airstrikes on the region by Russian Su-35 aircraft that took off from neighbouring Belarus.
In Kharkiv in the northeast, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said three people were killed and 34 wounded Saturday. One explosion believed to have been caused by a missile sent rescue workers scrambling near an outdoor market. The workers said one person was killed and at least 18 wounded.
The day before, rockets hit a residential area of Kharkiv, killing a 15-year-old boy, an infant and at least eight other people in Ukraine's second-largest city, officials said.
Nate Mook, a member of the World Central Kitchen NGO run by celebrity chef Jose Andres, said in a tweet that four workers in Kharkiv were wounded by a strike. Andres tweeted that staff members were unnerved but safe.
Putin 'in his own war logic'
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who met with Vladimir Putin this past week in Moscow — the first European leader to do so since the invasion began Feb. 24 — said the Russian president is "in his own war logic" on Ukraine.
In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Nehammer said he thinks Putin believes he is winning the war and "we have to look in his eyes and we have to confront him with that, what we see in Ukraine."
Nehammer said he told Putin what he saw during a visit to the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where more than 350 bodies have been found along with evidence of killings and torture under Russian occupation, and "it was not a friendly conversation."
Zelensky estimated that 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops have died in the war, and about 10,000 have been wounded. The office of Ukraine's prosecutor general said Saturday that at least 200 children have been killed, and more than 360 wounded.
Russian forces also have taken captive some 700 Ukrainian troops and more than 1,000 civilians, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Saturday. Ukraine holds about the same number of Russian troops as prisoners and intends to arrange a swap but is demanding the release of civilians "without any conditions," she said.
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